


Red & Blue (part 1)

by Softchelles



Series: Red & Blue [1]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Childhood Friends, College, F/M, Hickeys, I am so good at tagging guys, I finally found a place to put it, THE UGLY BLUE DRESS, ish, part one of a thing, post spider bite peter parker, senior prom, the blue dress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 14:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17603207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Softchelles/pseuds/Softchelles
Summary: His laces were red. Her book was blue. And every moment that came after.OrA look at Peter & Michelle over the years





	Red & Blue (part 1)

**Author's Note:**

> So this is part one of a thing. I have another part. This one's pretty fluffy and soft for the most part. No real warnings for what you're about to read other than it sucks because as usual, I'm not editing it and I'm throwing this online before I change my mind.
> 
> It's kind of weird pacing, and weird tenses, but these are all little moments that I felt like needed to be built up to before a thing in the next part. So it's here. OH WELL.
> 
> I'm over on twitter @softchelles  
> I'm on tumblr @softchelles but I'm never actually there because I'm the worst
> 
> Here we go.

He’s seven going on eight. It’s the first day of school. Peter’s got new shoes. They don’t light up or have fancy velcro straps-- but the laces are **red** and they look _really_ really cool. At least that’s what he thinks until they leave for lunch. The teacher’s near the front of the line, not paying much attention to the students at the back. If she was, maybe she would have seen. Maybe she would have intervened. And Peter’s young, and a bit clumsy, so he’s not all that aware of his surroundings. So when the kid behind him sticks out his foot, he trips. He falls flat on his face, glasses skidding across the pavement. 

The entire line laughs.

Well, almost the entire line.

Even though the world is a big out of focus blur, he sees a figure kneel down. As she gets closer he recognizes the mop of curls on her head. When she hands him his glasses, they’re a little cracked, but not broken. He’s able to make out the details of her face as she smiles sympathetically down at him. 

“Are you okay?” she asks quietly. Peter nods. “Are you sure?” He nods again.

Once she’s sure he’s sure, she turns her attention to the gang of giggling boys in the back. When she stands she stands taller than the rest of the boys in their grade. She looks the perpetrator dead in the eye and declares, “Your fly’s down.”

The boy that had tripped Peter flushes. The class’s laughs as he tries to fix his zipper. Peter takes advantage of their shift in attention and rises to his feet. “Thank you.”

She shrugs.

He learns her name is Michelle.  
She sits behind him in class.  
She doesn’t sit with him at lunch. She sits alone, her face hidden behind the spine of a big **blue** book. 

\--

He’s fourteen and he had been so excited to go on the field trip to Oscorp. He and Ned hadn’t been able to stop talking about for weeks. And really, the trip had been a lot of fun. It was going really well until one of those weird spiders jumped down and bit him. It leaves a big **red** welt on his hand. He doesn’t see the correlation between the bite and the fever that keeps him home the next day. Or the day after that. Or the day after that.

He’s stretched out on the couch, covered in blankets with a rag on his forehead-- because his body can’t decide if it’s hot or cold-- when there’s a knock at the door. Aunt May, who’s taken the week off to stay home with him, answers the door. 

“Hi, Mrs. Parker?” 

He’s too tired to peer over the couch to see who is in the doorway. Luckily, she answers that question for him. “I’m Michelle. I’m in a few of Peter’s classes. Principal Morita asked me to drop this off on my way home.” 

He can hear the friendly smile in his aunt’s voice as she answers, “That’s so kind of you, sweetheart.”

“It’s nothing,” Michelle insists. “Just a couple days of notes and stuff. And Mr. Harrington got him a card. Everyone on the Decathlon team signed it. I think it’s in there somewhere.”

“Thank you..”

“Is he…” There’s a pause, where she hesitates. He wonders if Michelle is giving up on whatever it is she wanted to ask. But then she powers through, and asks anyways. “--is he okay?”

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” May assures her. “He caught a pretty nasty bug--” (At this he almosts laughs. She doesn’t know the _half_ of it.) “--but he’s doing alright. Hopefully he’ll be back on Monday, as good as new.”

“Okay. Good.” There’s a pause, like she doesn’t know how to end the conversation. She awkwardly goes with “--thanks.”

“Thank _you,_ ” May politely corrects. Then the door clicks shut and Michelle is gone.

May walks into the living room, dropping the **blue** folder onto the coffee table. It’s so packed, it lands with a _thud_ that sounds throughout the Parker apartment. Peter groans, already agonizing over all the work he will have to make up. “I’m never missing school _again._.”

\--

That’s a lie.

A few months later, when his uncle dies, he misses the entire week.

\--

It’s the night of their senior prom. Peter has a track record of not going to these kind of things. But he’s been Spider-man for a few years. It almost killed him (along with half the universe) a few months back, so he’s decided maybe it’s important to enjoy the Peter Parker part of his life from time to time. 

Michelle (or MJ, as he gets to call her because oh yeah-- they’re _friends_ now) is his official ‘date’ Ned, who is usually Michelle’s date to every school dance, is officially off the market now that he and Betty are a thing. And so she asks Peter.

Just weeks before she had been ranting at lunch, sipping on her tea and complaining about how promposals were stupid and dumb and a total waste of everyone’s time. That didn’t seem to stop her from marching into practice late one afternoon, poster held in hand, the words “dances are lame but so are you so go with me or else” scribbled hastily in **red** sharpie across the front. 

_“Are you asking me to Prom?” Peter had grinned, amusement seeping through his words._

_“Shut up and say yes, or I am _going_ to kill you,” Michelle had threatened. _

The ‘promposal’ had been unexpected, but not _nearly_ as unexpected as her dress-- large, poofy, shimmery **blue** spandex. Everyone else seems thrown off, speechless when she walks into the room. “Don’t ask,” she threatens.

He doesn’t.

He does eventually get an explanation. It comes later in the night. The dance is long past over, but they’re still buzzing from the energy of the night, so they’re sitting in a diner. He’s picking fries off her plate. She’s stealing sips of his shake.

“My mom saw it in a store and thought I just _had_ to have it for my senior prom,” she explains with a roll of her eyes. “Because ‘It’s _so you,_ Michelle!’ God. She really doesn’t know me at all.” Even though she’s got his suit jacket draped over her shoulders, the blue is still so blindingly vibrant. Somehow, beneath the neon lights of the diner, it’s even brighter. But Michelle’s right. It’s not _her_ dress.

“It’s cute,” Peter tries. But he’s always been a terrible liar. That’s how she managed to figure out he was Spider-man way before he chose to tell her.

“Oh shut up.” She leans forward, dipping one of her fries into his shake. He scrunches up his nose as she tosses it into her mouth. “...what?”

“Did you just--” he asks, motioning between the fries and shake. She blinks back at him as she shoves another shake-soaked fry in her mouth. “That’s disgusting.”

She shrugs her shoulders. “Don’t knock ‘til you’ve tried it.” 

\---

He’s a freshman in college. So is she. They go to different schools and don’t get to see each other every day. He misses her, and she misses him, and when they reunite there’s fire-- hot, burning sparks and flashes of pent up yearning and desire. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, or so the saying goes. He’s not so sure as she examines the damages of the night before in his bathroom mirror. “Are you fucking _kidding_ me?”

He should feel bad. He knows that. Because she’s got a big presentation today and her neck is covered in **red.** And also bits of purple. They’re already starting to fade, but not fast enough.

“I’m _sorry,_ ” he tries. He brushes her hair to the side and places a kiss on her shoulder. His lips trail up until they’re ghosting over the evidence of the day before.

She almost buys it. _Almost._ But he’s not at all sorry and she calls him out on it. “No. No!” She pushes him off of her. “You’re not. And _now,_ I have to get up in front of the entire class with a neck full of hickeys like-- like I’m some teenager stuck at band camp. _Fuck you._ ”

“But isn’t that what got us into this whole mess in the first place? I-- ow!”

She punches him in the arm, and honestly he deserves it. She’s a lot stronger than she looks. But he’s always known that. The rest of the world likes to underestimate her, but Peter Parker has always known: Michelle Jones is a badass. 

“I’m borrowing your scarf,” she announces, marching into his room and pulling it from his closet without asking for permission. She wraps the **blue** material around her neck once, twice-- it does a decent enough job of hiding her skin.  
“Alright,” she sighs, clearly not satisfied with the disguise but deciding it’s going to have to do. “I’m out of here. I hate you.”

Peter smiles as she walks out the door.

He loves her, too.

\--


End file.
